Holo-promises

Got one of these doing your laundry?
No? Then shut up.

I am totally in favor of the future. Let's get that straight. That said, I am not cool with lying to ourselves about how future our lives really are. For example, a Roomba is not a robot. I mean, yes, technically it fits the definition but if you tell your friends that you have a robot that cleans your apartment and then introduce them to what is essentially vacuum cleaner that tootles around the place sucking up pet hair, chances are they're going to be disappointed.

That's how I felt when I read the headline: Turkish Prime Minister gives Speech as 10-Foot Hologram. Cool, right? The future is here. Next stop: holodecks! But no. It turns out contents were not as advertised. Behold:

Above: no.

The BBC later released this footage
of Erdogan freighting some developers
away from an abandoned amusement park.

Yeah, going to have to call bullshit here. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan pulled his not-o-gram the other day at a political rally when, instead of showing up in person, he joined live via "hologram." Admittedly I'm just going by the video here, but looks like they just projected him onto a screen. That's not a hologram, that's a video conference. Ok, maybe they've got some sort of fancy 3D-effect going on that we just can't see, but this is essentially Scooby-Doo villain technology. I was expecting a giant flickering head hovering menacingly over the audience, but instead watched as a hotel ballroom went absolutely apeshit over a glorified Skype session.

Speaking of which, uh...ewww...

I realize there's probably a dictionary definition of what exactly a hologram is, but when someone uses the term, most of us have a certain expectation and that doesn't include a screen. When R2-D2 delivered Princess Leia's coke-fueled plea to Obi-Wan, he didn't need a screen, he just projected her in mid-air. That's a hologram. Arnold J. Rimmer is a hologram, Al from Quantum Leap is a hologram. That jazz-singer the Bynars programmed for Riker to bone on the holodeck while they stole the Enterprise was a hologram.

Look, like I said, I'm all for the future. If you want to call your cell phone a comm-unit, go for it. If you want to say 'activate main viewer' every time you turn on the TV, more power to you. But please, let's not delude ourselves.

Is this just some asshole with Google Glass,
or do I have to call him a cyborg now?